On September 29th, 2016, the cluster got together and walked to and on the belt line for our mapping class. For the past month or so, we have been reading a book titled, “Where We Want To Live” by Ryan Gravel, a book that talks about the belt line; from its conception to its realization. The walk was meant to give us a better understanding of this belt line, and how it is changing the face of Atlanta with every passing day. On the walk to the belt line, we stopped by a number of places, mostly in the King Historic Center, where the professors and guests pointed out a variety of elements discussed in previous classes. After walking past the Historic King Center, we reached the beginning of our belt line walk, starting from Krog Street Market. We took a short break inside the market and listened on as one of our guest speaker, Mr. Angel as I recall, though I am not too sure myself, started talking about the belt line plans. He mainly focused on this one pathway that would temporarily pass through the Krog Street tunnel, so as to connect the south end of the belt line, to that of the north. It was very informative as he went into very explicit details about the plans, and the issues that surrounded the plan; when we were finished there, we began our belt line walk. As I have never been to the belt line myself, I thoroughly exited, and when we actually began to walk on the belt line itself, I couldn’t have been more amazed. The scenery I witnessed looked like it came right out of a fantasy; I could not believe that Atlanta had such a side to it. The walk was beautiful, and after a short while, we met up with Ryan Gravel himself. He gave us a run down of the belt line while we asked him about his visions, and how it felt like standing on an idea built into fruition. As we made our way to Ponce City Market, we made many more informative stops and took in many more scenery; there were a lot of dogs around. When we got to Ponce City Market, we got to see the impact of the belt line on the commerce surrounding the market, as there were bikes literally everywhere. People were just pulling up from the belt line, stopping in for either a meal or just to hang out and relax. We spent a good hour or 2 in the market, before we left. Overall, the walk was a great experience for me, as it expanded my horizons on the use of pre-existing structures as the basis for formation of something entirely new, and seeing first hand how the built environment can have such a large impact on the lives of so many people.

In an effort to make the site more navigable, I made it so that the once static front page is now a post page. Meaning, the home page keeps record of all post every posted to the site, allowing for easy access, as one only has to scroll down a certain extent to find whatever he/she is looking for. Besides that, I also made a bunch of categories and tags, examples of which; King Center, Built Environment Description, and Historical. These categories and tags are linked to Dr. Wharton’s “Get Help” page, making the material easy to find not only through her site, but through the blog as well. To make it easier for anyone who doesn’t want to scroll through the front page, I added a “recent posts” side bar on the main page. The side bar holds up to 10 of my latest posts in order, so instead of scrolling, just look for the name of the post and click away.

The Categories act as a folder, holding specific posts that I designate into said folder. The tags also contribute to this, add an extra layer of find-ability to posts/media. Metadata is very important, especially so in an age of technological information, where everything can be posted, and found online. The process of finding however, can either be easy, or hard, depending on the authors use of successful metadata; if they do not, the media or post that may prove essential to another, may never be found. This is essentially why I went through and optimized my information in such a way, that anyone can locate it with but a few simple terms. Another aspect to the whole reorganizing process, is the use of special terms; terms that fit/describe the object to the best of its ability. This is also to further enhance search-ability of certain data.